is self-publishing cheating?

and my ebook is the price of a latte this week

My book is available this week in ebook form at half price. $4.99. That’s the price of a latte these days, especially if you shun zionist starbucks and support your local cafe. The first chapter of my novel is available on this blog, and the first 10% of the book is available to download at the link below (that’s the first ~60 pages!!).

In other news, I’m currently pursuing a creative writing certificate while writing the second book in the MONDEGREEN trilogy and working on a novella (and writing short stories). I’ve begun literally editing documents in my dreams.

I’ve learned some troubling (interesting, illuminating) things in my writing classes about the traditional publishing industry, which only solidified my choice to self-publish my debut. Barring the fact that I didn’t want to wait 5+ years to get an agent before publishing TBN, I discovered that there are so few in-house editors (actual editors who will structurally change and improve the novel, not just proofreaders) in traditional publishing, that most authors have to hire an editor out of pocket. As a self-published author I had to hire an editor on my own, but that was expected because I wasn’t signing on with a publihsing house that presumably has editors to provide.

What this means is that even if I had traditionally published, my book would essentially be the same. That is, if the trad pub industry actually published first novels as the first in a series instead of a standalone with “series potential.” Side note: If I were to edit TBN into a standalone novel with series potential, it would have been an entirely different story. And at that point, I might as well have just written something else entirely and attempted to pitch that to agents. But I was and am committed to the MONDEGREEN story. It’s one story, split up into three books, becuase, well, it’s a long story. Naturally, since trad publishing is a business and not an arts foundation, agents and publishers don’t give writers a chance who don’t have ‘CASH COW’ tattooed on our foreheads (figuratively speaking of course).

All that being said, there are some authors who still get editors provided from publishers without having to pay out of pocket (after they get a response from an editor who is interested, which can take literal YEARS). So there is a lot of conflicting truths, which only serves to make the publishing industry more opaque than ever. Bottom line: getting an editor is not gauranteed to happen right away unless you pay.

I can respect that trad pub is a business and not an environment that sets out to cultivate and promote ART. But with anti-intellectualism on the rise, and more and more complaints of the publishing industry churning out poorly written, tropey slop every month with a few seeds of hope thrown in there with the occassional literary novel, independent publishing was and is the most practical choice for me at this time. At least insofar as it concerns getting my work out there in the world. I still submit to magazines and writing contests. I will be pursuing my MFA in creative writing in 2026. I am a “serious writer” according to all deifnitions…except for the self-publishing aspect.

The overall attitude towards self-published authors is that they can’t get published traditionally because they aren’t good enough. It makes me wonder how many talented, prolific, and decorated writers would have self-published if they had been able to early in their careers. They had no choice but to suffer until someone saw their potential. Younger writers now have the choice to let themselves be discovered on their own terms first. The irony is, self-published authors who were discovered by big publishers following their indie success were often shunned by those exact publishers or agents before gaining commercial success (whether that success be proportional to the quality of the work or not). The thought of having my novels fall into the void of unedited, poorly written self-published slop (which there undoubtedly is, which makes it more difficult for well-written indie works to rise to the surface) haunts me. But the thought of my work reaching high levels of success, only for agents and publishers to come wanting to poach me is equally haunting.

The truth is, there’s no ‘right’ choice when it comes to publishing anymore. If it were 1999, the choice would be obvious. But in 1999, the slush pile was still being looked at. in 1999, all editors operated in house for free (paid by the publishing company) to help shape your book into the best it could possibly be, both by commercial standards and by artistic standards (if applicable). In 1999, when I was exactly 0 years old, I guess I should have been writing and getting published instead of being a baby. And I probably should have bought a house in 2004, when they were still affordable, instead of watching Spongebob.

The barrier to entry to becoming an author has always been high, and despite acccess to self-publishing platforms, the barrier is actually higher. The trad publishing industry has become more exclusive, almost as if to offset how easy it is to self-publish. It’s more elitist than ever, and yet, the books that are being published (in the commercial market, which is most of it because publishers, I discovered, only set aside 20 or so ‘literary’ debuts a year) - a concerning number of the books that are being released these days are objectively poor quality. They are full of typos. They are 2013 Ao3/Wattpad fanfiction with original characters (but characters that are 2D for the sake of the reader self-inserting onto them). And this isn’t just in romance. I mean, I grew up with YA romances like Sarah Dessen’s novels. And now teenagers have books that are objectively written poorly. And don’t even get me started on fantasy.

Patriarchal conditioning bleeds onto the page in a myriad of ways. One of which is that there are so few TALENTED women writers in fantasy who make big sales. Game of Thrones and DUNE always sells big, but women writers who have the same narrative sweep, complex world-building, and character arcs are either relegated to YA or considered ‘niche’ because they don’t make the kind of sales that the poorly written and badly developed smutty romantasies do (which are objectively written at a 6th grade level). When I was in 6th grade I was reading The Giver, Memoirs of a Geisha, and the Cassandra Clare novels, and switching seamlessly between them. Many other nerds my age were too—I wasn’t a child prodigy. But that was in 2011. Reading wasn’t ‘trendy’ then.

In other words, the big name women fantasy writers are bad writers (or in the very least they don’t have editors who bother to challenge their work because the publishers know they will sell regardless and all they care about is money). And they mostly write romance with a little bit of fantasy. The problem with this is that people don’t want to read a high quality book written by a woman. And it gives the false impression that women can’t write a high quality book—and they are just silly girls who want to bliss out on “chicklit.” And even worse—it perpetuates competition between women wherein there can only be one talented woman deserving of literary praise at any given time. And pointing this out makes me an ‘elitist’ according to women who refuse to see the nuance of a situtation wherein women are conditioned not to think deeply. Some of those women are creative and want to write fiction, and the result is what I’ve described. And when the only women on the bestselling list (for prolonged periods) are bad writers, while the men who get on the list have high quality writing, what does this say? It’s hard enough as it is to be taken seriously as a woman doing anything—and if the only way to ensure success as a woman is to bimbo-fy myself and dumb myself down (to be unthreatening to men and palatable to a misogynistic culture), then I don’t want it.

My ramblings on this topic are not to wax poetic about ‘the good old days’ (they don’t exist within patriarchy) or to fall into a doom-and-gloom attitude, but more to work through my own conflicting feelings, within capitalism, about what defines ‘success.’

Many authors with these large sales I would not consider successful because my definition is not based on the number of books sold but if that book adds something to the world in that it makes people THINK, FEEL, and self-reflect on their own morality. If I were to create something I sloppily threw together that I knew people would drink up because it allowed them to escape from reality and forget about everything, including themselves, THAT would feel like cheating. But that’s because I’m a writer, and not a capitalist. I’m more concerned with the artistic integrity than with the mass appeal. But the kicker is: you need to have both to be ‘successful.’

In the context of self-publishing, what does this mean? There is a prevailing thought that if someone is successful in self-publishing, there are two explanations. One is that they are tapping into a market that is entertaining (tropes, smut, romance), but that their writing is likely bad and not good enough for trad publishing. (This ignores the fact that trad publishing has a lot of bad writing). The other explanation is that they WERE good enough for trad publishing, and people recognized this talent and rewarded them with sales, thus resulting in their work rising to the surface above all the other ‘unworthy’ self published books.

What this fails to address is luck. Bad writers get famous. Luck. Good writers get famous. Luck. Great writers are overlooked and underrated. Bad luck. Terrible writers are given billions of dollars and movie deals. Luck.

Let me decondition you:

Talent ≠ Success

Hard Work ≠ success

Luck = Success

This is the truth of the situation, at the end of the day. Every time the thought occurs that the reason for my low sales is bad marketing (could be true, but I’m trying to do it without giving mark zuckerfuck any money to ‘boost’ a post that will probably only reach 5 more accounts), or that it’s because if I had just changed the entire novel (or written something else instead) and waited to be chosen and published traditionally—I remind myself that everything is luck. There is quite literally no one (except maybe geniuses like Toni Morrison) who has success as a writer without luck. Even Toni had to get lucky to some exent.

I think the source of my distaste for the traditional publishing industry is my general philosophy about not wanting other people’s definitions of what kind of writer I am and what my work is and is not about (and is and is not worthy of) to win out over the work itself. This doesn’t mean refusing to edit or take critique. This means refusing to sacrifice my vision for the sake of a (potential) dollar. When agents and publishing companies are involved, they are invested in making money off of your art and work. It’s not bad, it’s just how the industry works. But if money is the end goal, (in my opinion, and yes we are going to get Marxist here for a second), the art will always play second fiddle. The story will too.

What if money wasn’t a factor? What if commercial appeal wasn’t in play? What would I write? What would YOU write?

Ultimately, it was my anti-capitalist stance that made me choose self-publishing. And before you whine about the fact that I use Amazon, the ultimate capitalism final boss, I would like to remind everyone that there is nuance within this situation. Because I do deserve to be compensated (even anti-capitalists need money!) for my work, and Amazon is the biggest book retailer in the world. That’s the reality of the situation. At least the book is published (and yes, edited!) on my own terms and within my own artistic vision. I can safely say I never sacrificed my art or my vision for the sake of ‘helping’ other people make money and ensuring everyone’s work ‘paid off.’ I still had to make sacrifices by taking out chapters, characters, and fundamentally changing the structure of the novel several times. (Kill your babies or whatever). I’m sure there are many traditionally published authors who feel that they never had to sacrifice their vision either, and good for them!

BUT, with self-publishing you don’t run the risk of making compromises to play it safe and give the publisher the most commercially marketable book, trusting that they know better than you due to their experience, only to have the book tank, and spend the rest of your career wondering if your original vision would have been better, and actually would have been more commercially successful. Which leads me to reiterate: luck. It’s LUCK. No one ever knows if something will be big or small or fall into the void or become a classic.

Yet I still feel the need to defend my choice to self-publish. It doesn’t feel like cheating, because it took me 6 years from start to finish to write and publish my novel. It was hard work. It was many hours and many drafts. Something that takes years of dedication and work cannot be the result of cheating. Still, I wrestle with telling people I’m self-published outright or just letting them think it’s traditionally published when telling them I’m an author. Is THAT cheating?

This isn’t to say I’ll never pursue traditional publishing—because if anything, I’d feel better publishing another project traditionally knowing that my debut project was 100% ME, my work and my art, with no thought of ‘what people will want’ and ‘how to ensure my agent isn’t disappointed.’

My choice to self-publish wasn’t out of a drive to ‘protect my work’ so much as a drive to protect myself and my reputation. Which is ironic, because being a self-published author has a bad rep. People assume that writers just love their work so much they never want to change it, like prolonging sending a child off to college, but in reality (and I can attest to this having met other writers), what we really care about is that our work is a reflection of the type of writer we are in the given moment such a project is released. We care that the work is the story we want to tell—and not someone else’s story. Maybe it’s self-centered, but why shouldn’t it be? I’m not a ghostwriter. My work has my name on it.

Ultimately, there is no right or wrong choice. I can’t demonize either form of publishing because there are so many cons and pros with both. However, we shouldn’t discard self-publishing as lazy, as cheating, or as the second choice. We should see it for what it is: a CHOICE. And I’m pro-choice.